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To: Durus
First you argue that the government can, without fail, tell me and everyone else what is and is not good for us to read, view, and listen to and then you tell me that they can't even accuratly determine the age of majority?

I didn't tell you that. I agree with age of consent laws and favor them. I consider them a last line of defense against the pro-license crowd--who incidentally have been working successfully to lower ages of consent in European countries.

It's usually the pro-porn libertarian types that have the biggest problems with age of consent laws, for the same reason that they problems with anti-porn laws generally. It's the government setting a moral standard which constrains individuals. I've had several libertarians tell me that they were more comfortable with the idea of parents or even the children themselves setting their own age of majority. That position is at least logically consistent for the "government shall make know law enforcing private morality" purists.

You claimed that "knowledgeable consent" is what somehow separated child porn from all the rest. My point was to demonstrate how utterly absurd the notion that an action which is considered God-awful and wrong on 11:59 PM on the night before a child's 18th birthday, is somehow perfectly acceptable one minute later. Such a position is not logically consistent, though it may be legally accepted.

My position is that the action is God-awful on both sides of midnight.
236 posted on 09/30/2004 10:25:42 PM PDT by Antoninus (Abortion; Euthanasia; Fetal Stem Cell Research; Human Cloning; Homo Marriage - NON-NEGOTIABLE ISSUES)
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To: Antoninus
"My point was to demonstrate how utterly absurd the notion that an action which is considered God-awful and wrong on 11:59 PM on the night before a child's 18th birthday, is somehow perfectly acceptable one minute later. Such a position is not logically consistent, though it may be legally accepted."

Of course it is logically consistent. The age of majority is set at 18. Before that point a person is considered a minor and after they are considered to have reached the age of majority. No matter how you squirm, if there is an age of majority, then there is going to be a before and after. Polarizing the issue to a matter of hours (of before and after) doesn't change the logic behind the age of consent laws. I won't argue that a person somehow gains wisdom in the few hours preceding their 18th birthday but that's really beside the point isn't it? It's not like child pornographers are interested in 17 year olds anyway.

I'm not going to even attempt to defend Libertarians position on this because I don't care what their position is. This, like all civic issues, is strictly a constitutional matter, not one of unenumerated political ideologies.
246 posted on 10/01/2004 6:36:54 AM PDT by Durus
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